The OW one gameplay is insane. Genji deflected the Zaria graviton, SK Boop up the Rhine to get the diva bomb to hit more players. That is such an amazing clip.
@@willwunsche6940 Even with I believe emp and hack locking u out of ur abilities for 5 seconds… I would take that with two tanks over this current sombra with one tank.
@@teencorn9169 I mentioned it because it was the 6v6 footage included in the video this comment was talking about. Honestly I'd be fine to occasionally retry most metas in some magical Minecraft launcher style patch version system, as long as the main game is always accessible
My fear for Lucio is space ranger. Its already been confirmed that she will be the second support to have one of their signature utilities be speed boosting while also having decent verticality as well. I like competition but I'm afraid this will begin an unhealthy competition now that Lucio won't bring such a unique value anymore.
Just like venture is a different doom, space ranger is possibly a different lucio. Next we'll have a tank with a baseball bat instead of a hammer to replace rein.
If they manage to make her fill a different niche while having this utility, then it would actually be healthy and stop him from being a must pick, which is something people asked for a long time ago. Fact is, him being the only support with speed boosting capabiltiies is forcing him to get nerfs that remove fun from his gameplay.
Playing the game is so much less exciting now. Less variation, less possibility of combos (even miss halt/hooking with a friend). I’m not excited for skins anymore, or trying cool strategies with a group because it’s geared towards individual deathmatch gameplay
Reminds me of one of the last times i played ow a few months ago, my friends wanted to play that mayhem mode in arcade where theres no cds. The entire match was one big fight over a point that ended with a draw because like 2 people died the whole game. My friends somehow found that peek gameplay
Because this dogshit format is removing the identity of heroes one by one to make it work and it still doesn’t. I had more fun playing assassin Hanzo against the impenetrable double shield or unstoppable goats comp than I do in the game. Well, did, because I’m not playing this dogshit anymore. Magic completely gone
But I thought 5v5 gave more playstyle options, it’s crazy how since ow2 came out every hero from the original game has lost their identity, totally a coincidence
Yeah it's crazy, it's almost like giga buffing a solo tank and support abilities makes the whole game about play denying and poke rather than playmaking and dive 🤔 who thought that would be the case 🤯
tbf 6v6 and 5v5 both have plus and negatives cant win ether way reallly my biggest issue with 5v5 is if you have a bad tank it nearly always just automatic loss
As a long lucio player, yeah things are rough lol. The game itself is going in a direction that doesnt reward high risk for high reward which puts lucio on the same path, which realy sucks. Having lucio as a character that could do flashy plays only if they were good enough to do always strived me to do better, but the way things are going its hard to try and find things to improve on.
11:37 this is how Blizzard wants every OW2 interaction to go. Endless stalemates without resolution. Every hero with enough hp and free resources so you can always survive. They want it so that you can have perfect mechanical execution but it falls just short of actually getting an elimination. OW2 is bowling with bumpers. 5v5 issue bring back 6v6
whats even worst is the map designs ,even though lucio is supose to be on the walls all the recent map have sight and a lot of obstacules in the wat making him play on the ground
Another huge issue: if lucio team speed boost is nerfed, will he be the worst support? He does less damage and less healing than other supports for long range poke comps, brig is way better at protecting her teammates, and other supports provide more utility if speed boost is bad. So how do you make him fun without gutting him? I still find him kind of fun, but it’s nothing like he used to be. I think if I had the same dueling potential I had pre-s9, that would be enough
Maybe if they change how he functions with and without speed boost. When he is on healing he shoots 10 % slower and 1 less projectile and when he is speeding he shoots 10% faster and 1 extra projectile. Amp up maybe should do an initial burst healing on heal and maybe charge an extra powerful boop that can be held for 2 seconds. I think something along those lines could make his gameplay more fun. They should have also left his alt damage in. That was fun when we had it. My accuracy hasn't changed either BTW. I didn't notice the projectiles getting fatter.
IMO, he's unfortunately a victim of Blizzard's power creep design philosophy. The only real way to make him fun again without making him oppressive is to nerf the power creep back down to manageable levels. Health pools, damage, healing, abilities; they all need to be nerfed so that individual ability can shine again. And maybe stop making ridiculous supports like Brig/Bap/Kiri who can just do EVERYTHING so EASILY.
I feel the auras should grow to about Inspire wide, but remain as tall as they are today. That would loosen the shackle to the team, while avoiding skybox Lucio shenanigans. You could also make speed boosting rarer by buffing the healing aura or by degrading the effect of continued exposure.
I’ve felt this, but didn’t know why it was suddenly so much harder to dps lucio and win. I’ve been playing with my team too and it’s been really boring. Thanks for the insight, I’m gonna go flank in some ranked games. :D
Been feeling the same way on Lucio lately but didn't know how to say it. This video gets it out perfectly. One of the main problems being that i feel like my high technical skill on lucio doesnt even matter when their lucio just sits in the back and farms beat first. Like Eskay said, It seems like they can't allow lucio to be individually good because of his high team value, being the only speed boosting support. Maybe Space Ranger will help if she is a speed boost character which would make it so lucio isnt the only pick if you need speed
The problem with EVERY other hero. I bet you I’d describe a Hanzo in EXACTLY the same way you spoke about Lucio but you’d have problems with it when they both suffered from the same issue that 5v5 brings. And it’s that the increase individual value requires so many heroes to lose all or most of their identities and that’s the curse of 5v5.
I feel like Lucio is only played so much because of his speedboost. As soon as Juno comes out with a similar boost, but more fun to play and more healing, then Lucio will become obsolete and you will never see him anymore. And when you do other roles will get mad for picking a ''bad character''. Like what happened with Zenyatta and Lifeweaver. I still truly believe that the biggest issue with balance in this game, is the sheer amount of heroes, and the apparent need to keep adding new ones. You are never going to solve an equation if you keep adding variables. That seems to me like a pretty fundamental principle in math.
True and I'm curious to know where Eskay stands rn because she pointed at the changes brought by 5v5 as what "killed" Lucio, but a while back she defended 5v5 so maybe her opinion changed.
I HATE how the balance team is getting blamed for this! It’s not their fault. The format is unbalanceable and they have to make tanks the way they are and they have to remove so many things to attempt to make it work and it still doesn’t. It’s a game direction issue.
@@RIP_ZYZZ1738 it's more than that. The changes they make don't make any sense. Format aside. I've played since 2016 and these devs don't have the same heart anymore
@@Aentismik The old devs were vegetables what are you talking about? They’re updating more and the old team stumbled upon this game by accident. The changes they make won’t make a difference and they’re trying anything to fix an unpatchable problem
Lucio has been the one thing that consistently brings me back to playing overwatch because of how unique his movement is and how fun he is to play aggressively. If the only viable playstyle is to walk around like a bot I see no reason to return to overwatch.
It frankly highlights an issue with the whole game. Ana, sleep dart nerfs. Hanzo, ult nerf, no one shot. Numerous characters have completely lost identity.
Tbf, i don’t think anyone is upset about not being one shot other than the people DOING the oneshotting. For example, I literally refuse to touch hanzo, because the VERY FIRST TIME I ever touched the character, I got four kills, all headshots, and I saw a total of… None of them. The only reason I knew how I even got the kills was when the “play of the game” screen came up. You could see my visible confusion, that I was just randomly shooting and things were dying. You shouldn’t be able to do that brother, that was the least fun I’ve probably ever had in my life on overwatch and we were WINNING 😭🙏
@@meat3958 but now I can preform the best shots learn to play the character to much, headshot this ana who doesnt notice me and she looks at me. and walks away cause what am i gonna do. i have the longest ttk in the entire game pass my ability now. everything hanzo can do relys on storm arrow, tank pressure, and actual threat to the enemy, it all its related to a cd. like litteraly if you dont have a mercy pocket your entire gameplay loop is spam tank and then cd is up i have to choose do i use this for some potential threat or spam tank (its litteraly 90% of the time better to spam tank) so then i spam tank and thats all you can ever do on hanzo. hanzo is litteraly a worse widow in almost every aspect that just has a better cd. multiple times today I have gotten these actual predictions, these good flicks that have resulted in my death because i cant oneshot these threatning targets or even take advantage of oblivious targets. if hanzo feels so terrible why do i still play him? Cause who he should be in theory is badass, how his weapon feels is so unqiue you cant get that basically anywhere. but I now just hate playing this game cause i really cant ever apply real pressure anywhere anymore
@@meat3958 Wouldn't that apply to so many things, though? Noone would miss getting hacked, except the sombra herself. Noone would miss getting frozen, discorded, slept, pharah boop, Lucio boop, etc if they remove it.
@@meat3958 I dont disagree with this, I think "bad designs" like one shotting, and many other chars I dont enjoy like sombra with her hack, would not be complained about being hard nerfed. The problem, especially in 5v5 when things like one shot are much more impactful hence needing a more needed nerf, you end up destroying the char with no real rework concept, just number changes. So like the original comment said, numerous chars have "lost" their identity. Doesnt matter if they feel better to be worse in the game, its the fact they keep these chars with no soul in the game for the sake of not removing them or going through the effort of reworking them properly
Does anyone else feel like since the season 9 hitbox changes, dodging damage on lucio is extremely difficult. I feel like if the enemy can see me they will probably do damage to me. For me in overwatch 1, some of the joy i got from playing lucio came from using my movement to actually affect the outcome of a fight instead of just for changing position to somewhere more advantageous. Its not like i cant play lucio anymore but it certainly makes him much less fun, same with all of his other nerfs.
Yeah absolutely. I feel like there's way more pressure to play safely since it's so easy for a cass to walk up and two tap me. I can't get creative with movement as much anymore. The only time I can really have fun and duel people is when I'm playing on my alt with my friends, but at that point I'm basically smurfing.
I dont mind boop being reverted back & give back his primary gun damage back idk was around s10 when they nerfed his oreos but gave the boop a packed a punch thundergun.
Watching the OW1 Lucio gameplay really makes me miss him. I used to love going for an aggro play and booping a tank/Rein out of position. Now if I try that the tank barely moves and I get two tapped before I can even escape :(
DUDE being able to spawncamp people on Ilios without them hearing us coming from the other side of the map, or waiting for the supports to leave thee spawn and actually killing them, damn if anything you could spawncamp tanks too.
Well the definition of “duel Tracer” depends here. I don’t think he was ever able to stick on the ground and win but Redshell type people could by being Lucio gods. And now even Lucio gods can’t 1v1 tracer like they could before.
Yeah I've been struggling with that too. I feel like I should be the one peeling for my other support, but in practice I get focused by the tracer and feel pretty helpless.
Its almost as if games are more fun with greater amounts of chaos which forces collaboration, and enables niches to shine. I miss ow1 not because of nostalgia but because the game enabled a myriad of strategies to get to the same point. Now that the game is more focused the allure of discovery has died with it and thus we are in the cycle of Nerf/Buff flavor of the month!
And now since 5v5 ruined the experience for tanks, my experience as a Hanzo player is ruined in turn because they HAVE to remove one shot so that he’s no oppressive in this format. But that gutted his identity at the same time. This format was a mistake.
I know tracer has always been like lucio, pretty powerful, and i know she's still very much a good pick but...as a tracer main i feel the same. I remember when i could be totally aggresive, and just because i had good mechanics and awareness i could come out on top while still playing with the team...now i feel like the only way that i can do plays rn is to play pretty passively, waiting for a huge engage from my team so i can get in, since hitboxes, hp and bullet sizes were increased, now everyone can just hit you as you approach them.
lucio is a hero that was special due to his movement in a game where no character has to just walk anymore. We looked at the powercreep in the game and got "we just buff everyone cause people get mad at nerfs" as a response
The especially scary part of Lucio right now is that there was a fair bit of heavy hinting about Space Ranger "making battles faster" and "having something only one support has", which sounds a lot like speed boost Lucio's mainly stayed strong meta of high-tier play because of the utility of speed in organized play. Adding a hero who also has speed, and different utility, while Lucio is in the state that he's in, could entirely push him out of relevancy, which would really suck cause he's a super interesting character to have in the game My experience with lucio is kinda interesting. I played him a LOT seasons 1-8, and I'd say I was fairly good at him for where I was at. When season 9 hit, I *tried* to play him more, but I just couldn't do, anything, and ended up switching to other supports. I can still play him well when I need to, but where I was once a hard lucio main in support, I'm now someone who barely touches him, cause I feel like I can't do anything, even if I'm decent at him, and it sucks
id like to look at this from the glass half full perspective, i really hope space ranger gets a speed boost, not so lucio can lose what makes him unique now, but so the devs realize how bad lucio becomes after that. I hope they then give lucio individual power. because yes i agree that lucio is good because of speed. let me make dumb plays that may work, just give me the tools to do it, and let people that want to play how he is being played now still play him. just, not this half baked shell of what he once was.
I'm really not looking forward to space ranger taking up the same niche as Lucio since he's always felt like a bit of a 'lightning in a bottle' character where they got pretty much everything right about him and I HIGHLY doubt they'd be able to do it again with their current hero design and balance philosophy
@@milk903 Oh I agree, I think giving another hero who has speed may help, but it may not. My hope is that with another hero having speed they'll be more willing to nerf Lucio's speed instead of the other fun parts of him. I feel like the devs are super hesitant to nerf speed cause "it's in a good spot" and it's such an important ability, but it's caused them to hit Everything Else about Lucio to nerf him instead of the thing that actually nerfs his power, which just lowers his skill ceiling
@@starrysky8118 on the one hand I'm feeling like less of a doomer now that I see her entire kit in motion. On the other hand, even though the test seemed to be pretty balanced I'm concerned with how they'll change her going forward since I imagine her performance is going to differ greatly between low and high rank play and trying to balance her for one demographic may ruin the equilibrium of her kit, (take the Venture nerfs when they dominated low ranks on release or Bastion buffs that caused him to be meta as examples), and have more of an effect on the characters that share the same utility as her
please save Lucio Nation eskay I feel like this is a reoccurring theme with overwatch 2. Things are functional, things are as they are intended to be, the game can be played, but none of it is fun. Tanks weren't unpowered last patch but they sure felt like shit to play. Lucio isn't bad, just isn't fun to play anymore. Ranked works better then the card system did, but ranked still doesn't feel good to play. I feel like blizzard needs to focus more on actual fun and making the game feel good to play rather then just constant numbers rebalancing all the time.
As always, such a well thought out opinion. Great job articulating everything. I do feel like there is room to make those suggested changes. Lucio isn't even the sole character with a speed boost anymore. And I much prefer when Lucio is more active in the game than passive. I feel like wall ride doesn't have a purpose, if you need to just sit behind your tank all game shooting Frisbees across the map. I'm not even a Lucio player, I play tank. Everytime I died to Lucio boop, I know it's just my positioning that allows it.
@@KURENANI I think it's the best part of his kit. Read after the comma, I'm saying I don't think it has too much of a purpose if you just need to sit behind your tank and play with your other support
I hope you continue making videos like this! I love your insight and often times both you and frogger tend to say my thoughts in a much better way than i ever could. Ive missed old lucio so much and this made me feel like my feelings are valid.
What is most bizarre and egregious is that Blizzard have the data to know who mains which character, like Eskay with Lucio, so they could easily identify the expert opinion needed when making balance changes for any hero - and they don’t. In any other industry that requires building complex systems with many moving parts, experts are identified and connected to the process of development. ✨🤷♀️✨
i used to love lucio. i came back to grinding ranked after a few months and hated having to healbot. i thought that i had changed and just didnt enjoy the hero anymore, but its sad to see how much our frog boy has changed
I didn't really understand why I stopped playing him recently, but this seems to sum it up pretty well. The tank boop passive started the erasure of his identity, and it hasn't gotten any better since.
Lucio is in a real bad state right now. I'm a mid/high masters player since rank reset and have been a low/mid GM in pasts seasons and even tho I imagine in real high ranks is worse, Lucio has become much more boring this pasts months. Its clear that is a structural problem that came with 5v5 but even so he has been nerfed and I dont understand why his primarly meta ability hasn't been touched. With this said, I still think there is hope for Lucio and those of us who like to play it: with the release of Space Ranger (another speed boost character) and the discussion of 6v6 on Blizzards table I hope Lucio can get to where he was before or at least a better state. Stay strong Lucios PD: Kiriko is Brigitte 2.0, cleanse and tp are the single worst cds since Brigitte's release, please #DeleteKiriko
It’s almost as if all the changes have been slowly forcing all heroes in each role to play more and more similar to each other and decreasing the amount of variety in hero kits.
I’ve been feeling this for a bit; I was playing some esports for my school team and even with the most hours being on Lucio, I felt I had more impact with Lifeweaver of all supports. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even queue support anymore because of the lack of impact. #Iamaglorifiedtorbjornturret
I wouldn’t be surprised if space ranger did have some sort of speed mechanic and they’re making Lucio kinda shitty to make space ranger seem like a bit of a better pick when they come out
Mercy is in a similar dilemma. They have made her way less fun and have forced a playstyle of being on the ground and holding dmg boost on one DPS. Yet, the devs will never touch her.
Yes, even though I’m way lower (peaked Diamonds last Season), I feel a lot of these!! As someone who swapped to Lucio after ow2, I just feel like a spectator now and I don’t even know how you’d fix that. These last few seasons make him not fun anymore, where before if I wasn’t having fun I’d switch to Lucio because that guaranteed I’d have fun.
As a Tracer main I agree with you when it comes to the Lucio duel. It was a fun interaction but now with the projectile changes the Lucio’s I face play a lot more safer and it’s not really fun when you’re fighting each other and neither of you are dying. But in general duels just aren’t fun anymore when they get suzu or life gripped and it feels awful.
I call this "the brig-ification of overwatch". Brig-ification - removing all skill expression until the hero becomes Brig, stand next to people, spectate, and use mostly 1 button and mostly left click. Hero's that have been brigified: Mercy, Zen, Ana is halfway there, Hanzo, genji, Mauga, they are working on ball..., the list goes on.
ngl I don't feel this, sure 1v1s are harder but they are still winnable if you get the jump on them, don't feel like the skates are that loud you just need to manage the sound by changing wallride style It feels like macro matters way more so the windows for redditing are very small, maybe your midfight wallriding is inefficient? Also on the feeling like diffs don't exist, they absolutely do, output gapping the other lucio requires mechanics to get the extra value
idk if this is a hot take, but lucio is similar to mercy in the way that the utility the hero provides is more for the team and not for the benefit of the lucio/mercy. When your team doesnt capitalize on your utility, then you basically aren't really doing much.
You know, this explains why I’ve felt like I’ve only been good playing with my team. I thought I was just bad, because I’m not a great player, most of the roster doesn’t work for me because I have absolutely dreadful aim. It was especially a problem because I watch Frogger and kept thinking "Surely you don’t need to be that aggressive to be good" but it’s good to know this is an experience that’s true for most people.
I think Lucio needs competition for the role of team taxi. If they don't Blizzard should adjust the throughput of his speed aura. Allow him to remain individually powerful and lessen the effect of his speed aura on teammates OR give him competition. Just stop making him individually less impactful when that's not the issue. Getting jumped and shit on by Lucio sucks but everyone that plays OW2 knows how hard that is
At least your favourite hero has been meta for years. Imagine how other people feel, especially Tank players, who are constantly forced on heroes they don't want to play. From Orisa, to Hog, to Mauga, it sucks. This is literal prison.
@@ExtraEskay Just as there have been numerous Lucio onetricks reaching rank 1, and far more dominating the Top500 leaderboards. That doesn't meaning anything. Lucio thrives both in high ELO play as well as pro play, and has been meta for years.
Just because someone else's heroes are also in a bad place doesn't mean that Lucio players aren't allowed to critique the balance team when they misstep with changes to him, especially because he's long been agreed upon as a rare cornerstone of ACTUAL balance where his strength comes from very high skill expression and team coordination. Lucio often being meta doesn't mean he's op, just that he fills a niche that nobody else can, and the constant nerfs are just going to add him into the growing list of characters getting worthless tweaks every season only for those to be reverted again right after, which is also why we keep getting back to back miserable tank metas. This video isn't just about Lucio not being fun, it's about how the devs have yet again removed much of the depth of a character through nerfs because the only effective playstyle is passive spamming and beat farming
@@OlmeuuAnd the saddest part, coming from a Hanzo main, is that the balance team HAS to do this to even attempt balancing this unbalanceable format. This is a game direction issue. Aaron Keller has been nothing but pretty good/decent but one huge flaw he has is that he seemingly never speaks about the negative of the game. Never talks about mistakes they’ve made, they just move past it like nothing happened.
Thank you for mentioning this. this nerf felt very unecessary and confusing. a hotfix for their tank buffs nerfs lucio?? how? except i don't think his speed boost needs a nerf. It requires the team to be with him which doesn't always happen and when it does it is risky as clumping up can make the team vulnerable to a lot of ults and abilites.
I’m only platinum on support (I main bap), but since the new tank change, most supports feel like torb turrets. In my rank, most games are both teams hiding behind there tank until someone gets a pick. if I try to get a pick, the enemy tank starts to roll through my team lol. THE MOST SUCCESS IVE HAD THIS SEASON IS PLAYING BAP LIKE HES BRIGG! Protecting my other support and only shooting when my tank need to recover their cool downs. It’s so boring man.
I mean is this just not a format issue? Not trying to beat a dead horse here, the issue of the format should be taken into consideration with the context of hero design. All of Eskays points were valid, I mean the games just not fun when Godzilla is running at your immobile team with their own Lucio. We’ve damn near had Lucio/Kiri meta for 11 seasons, does that not mean anything? Lucio hasnt been fun either, I play main support but prefer Brig because I dont want to be a torb turret. Im not an expert but I do feel like 5v5 could work because we had JOATS, Brig JOATS to be exact. Not trying to mislead here but it felt like Brig was that 2nd tank Lucio could speed around and she had ways to mitigate JQs cooldowns (not necessarily in a 1v1). I would say the right call to make is not to make Lucio depend on only speeding the tank around 90% of the time and shift that power around. But its hard to say because removing power from the tank just leads to Bastion ripping ass and nuking tanks. Which kind of leads to what I mentioned at the beginning, these heros were designed for 6v6. Not taking the time to fully redesign heros/maps for 1 less tank really fucked with the game and playstyles.
Sadly this is just what 5v5 balance philosophy (or lack thereof) has done to the game. Who could have saw this problem of heroes losing their identities coming? RIP Overwatch if they don't change course ASAP. For the Lucio accuracy: they also specifically nerfed Lucio's projectile speed back in the hotfix after the S9 changes while making the majority of other heroes vastly easier to hit shots with. I kind of don't agree that Lucio needs/needed nerfs; it's that we need more speed boost based supports with their own separate niches, imo and this was something that was called out years ago. And on that topic, I find it crazy that in the patch where everyone got more HP and easier to land shots, Lucio ended up losing damage lmao
In overwatch 1 Lucio was easily my main. I was a lucio one trick who consistently got 3-4 gold (ik stats dont matter) and the one time I almost got 5 gold my friend who was genji got gold on objective time at the last second (ironic). In OW 2 I pretty much never touch my boy. If I play him the way I used to I explode and now I can go an entire night without an environmental kill wheras in 1 It was at least one a game in maps you can. Lucio lost the sauce that made him so addicting. He still has movement that scratches my ADHD brain but I cant make full use of his movement to fight cause I have to be passive. Completely lost his identity.
As a flex dps player, specially I was a junk rat main. The nerf of the combo made junk rats fun playstyle imposible and were left with the low skill annoying style that is spamming. Same as Lucio nerf making it not buyable to go in assassin a style and get out which people would agree is the fun playstyle of Lucio. No one has fun sitting on Burger King Lucio on the back line just healing
1:53 "Other people make it work but I feel bad when I play like that so I won't" Well shit. Other Tracers shoot people in the face, but I feel bad doing that, so I don't. ***Tracer lost her magic***
Ah yes now we care about heroes losing their identity. I’m sitting over here playing hanzo who is a SNIPER that can’t 1 shot shit and lost his SNIPER identity and is now brainless spam.hero . Now we complain about hero identities being lost And due to 1 shot being lost I lost so many different play styles and can only really be a spam bot without a mercy pocket
litterally me with mercy rn :(. i start at ow2 so idk what ow1 mercy is like though i played a bit ow1 with practice against ai cause i have 0 experience and he was diamo from my brother acc. but even though at s2, my mercy movement sucked and still healed a lot, i had fun on her but much less now maybe after more than a year just bored but i felt a sharp difference. mercy wasnt the same, her movement was buffed i think to match ow2 movement creep then they nerf it which HUH? i get she is on the easier side which i dont deny and she doesnt really have any playmake abilities like lucio or other supports but they kinda screw her up and i get she is annoying to play against. Now i just feel sitting back and wait for a flank to come at me and pray that i live instead of flying to my aggressive dps or tank to help them win their dual cause the projectile buff just makes me explode. she is suppose to be one of the most mobile support but sometimes i feel kiriko is even more mobile than mercy, idk if its just me. I hate that overwatch 2 is making jacks of all trades character more than heroes that focus on a very niche. like the ow2 heroes, most of them dont accel in a niche but they are in general strong or playable, (LW is a diff case), and most heroes now have free escape jail card like venture, LW, moira, kiriko, ram with nemesis, etc. With all the overhealth, speed boost, emergency healing, like its almost i get bring back to life almost instantly but mercy dont have that, i get she has her movement and leech passive but its not instant like other supports. and dmg boost doesnt even feel viable anymore, it just feels like a sidegrade to kiriko dmg. And they indirectly nerf the skill expression on dmg since overwatch 2 heroes abilites when get dmg boost before it gets activate then get used but mercy turns off dmg boost, the ability doesnt get dmg boost the whole way like sojourn aoe, jq wound, ram nemesis so it doesnt rewards u timed out when to dmg boost the person, rn its a small cast of heroes but in the future.... Valk doesnt even feel like an ult, its just there, imo it fits mercy when she paid the premium subscription and able to zoom around but it doesnt feel impactly, the team wide dmg boost and heals that get nullify by the dps passive and its not burst heal, and u want to use valk when its a 5v4 ideally not even a 5v5 just to secure the fight, exception applies ofc. and the other cases using valk to save urself, i find it fun or to stall which doesnt feel viable when u have to touch the payload and no ally to ga to so the enemies are on the payload so they shoot u down easily. Come to think about it, kiriko kinda powercreep mercy in a way, she has great movement tp that goes through wall, wall climb for vertical movement. suzu is like res but better, kitsune is a better valk offensively and defensively, kiriko dmg when good aim does outperform dmg boost, mercy saving a person when they need can just be done by kiriko that tp in, suzu, pocket heals, dmg the enemy to reduce their pressure and it becomes a 2v1 and her heals is more bursty than mercy. mercy healing change in s3 is suppose to be accomodate her triage playstyle a guardian angel but her movement was nerf so she couldnt get their to triage heal then they remove the healing change, it was op but i thought it was a good idea but they just scrap instead of a nerf, it added depth to her heals, which rewards mercy who heal to 50% hp then dmg boost to let the other support finish off the heals. Now even with healing someone, i feel like they still die and just feed the enemy
i mean, you aren't forced to play passive on any character- different patches just optimize different playstyles. if we were to stumble into another JQ rush meta, playmaking on lucio would be more valuable once again. if playing passive kills your enjoyment of the character and game entirely, you have the free will to swap or run it down, you just won't win nearly as much
i'm bronze, so take this how you want, but my experience is really about the same. this season i feel so much less able to *do* anything. if someone dives my ana i can't protect her, all i can really do is boop, speed, and hope unless the dps diving us is absolute dog water. similarly i can't make any individual plays. like how is the most fun i've had this season just following a jq around, speeding her up? i don't even smile when i get ilios anymore.
my biggest problem with lucio is how consistently you have to play him to stay good at him. OW2 just isnt fun enough to do that anymore espacially since every hero has close to no weakness and there are no drawbacks to mistakes anymore
Oh no, the support that’s meant to stay close to their team to get optimal value has to stay close to their team to get optimal value, just say you have a massive skill issue, if you can’t adapt then you’re the issue, don’t know what else to say 🤷🏻♂️
Back in overwatch one, Lucio was the only chracter I played. I barely play him any more. They somehow managed to make a wall riding skater boy less engaging than an old lady that literally puts you to sleep.
I think as a tank player the issue isnt how strong the tank itself is its that there is no damage mitigation from anyone but a single tank. giving other roles skillful dmg mitigation (or adding a 2nd tank) would do so much for the freedom of all roles. tanks could be balanced and not need to constantly beg for healing, supports could do more than healbot, and dps wouldnt just spam a tank doing nothing
I completely entirely agree, i couldnt even put it into these many words but you decsribed exactly how it feels to play lucio rn, you have so little impact and I literally only ever take duals now when weve lost a fight and i need to reset lol. Honestly the most fun part of most lucio games now is the rollout from spawn to the fight
honestly the same thing happened to mercy. Playing her is just being a dmgboost bot now. All her other playstyles are no longer viable and are outclassed by other supports. I just stopped playing her and thus the game aswell bc its no longer fun even if mercy was giga busted at times just heal or dmgboost botting, sitting behind your ash or hanzo isnt fun.
so after gathering my thoughts for a bit, for me mercy died at the begining of overwatch2 where they replaced her superjump bug with the ability she has now. I did not realise it at the time bc it was sth new and shiny to play with but just like you i spent hundrets of hours perfecting my superjumps. All of my trainging has been turned into a button. Yes it was a bug and yes the abiliry was made to make it easier to use mercys jump but whyy?. Not everyone should be able to hit every headshot on widow not everyone should be able to do every rollout on doom or lucio. Yes mercy is a "beginner" character but that was the beauty of old SJ, it gave depth to an on paper very easy hero. New mercy players didnt even know it existed. Good mercy players knew but were usually using it as positioning and dying alot getting cought in the air. And great players were using it as a repositioning tool to get to good positions on the map and support even the deepest dives by say genji, that was fun bc it was high risk high reward. Now you press a button and do the same thing. And now everyone was so good at it that they nerfed the cooldown to almost 4 seconds... Like if you make sth so easy to do, example give widow aimbot as an abilty and eveyone starts hitting headshots, ofc you will need to nerf the abilty to do headshot kills. And now bc they nerfed her movement after making it not be a skill expression anymore.. your gameplay is to stand behing a wall boost your *insert dps here* and wait till they get rolled by the enemy dps than hit E and repeat. Yes the ability itself if alot more powerful that old SJ but thats the thing i and most other mercy players dont want the hero to be broken we want the hero to be fun to play.. I feel like alot of heros have lost their magic with ow2 and lucio is just another one added to the list.
To be honest I took a break from overwatch for a bit, and came back as a Lucio main. And I tried to just play how I used to and thought I just got a lot worse, but this video made me realize that I feel this same way when it comes to Lucio. Just ain't as fun as he used to be and I hope they fix it :(
yeah i feel the same way, i just play quick play nowadays and play that perma aggressive playstyle for fun cause it literally just does not work in ranked anymore
This season as a lucio one trick has been weird for me. I’ve had a 55%- 67% win rate every season since S4. But with this one, 8 hours in and I have a 32% win rate. It could just be a bad lose streak but there’s a lot of moments when I’m getting pushed hard by an aggressive dva and my boop just does nothing to them and I’m dead. Or a couple games where if tank boop actually did something EVEN THO they’re on the edge then my team would’ve won the last fight
I'm experiencing the same. Low masters Lucio, usually with a 54-56% WR over nearly every other season, this season struggling to maintain 50%. It's really, really shit.
Isnt this a problem chained to 5v5 though? All of these problems go away if we revert the hp and hitbox changes in I think season 9 and go back to a 6v6 format where lucio got effectively 2 more potential targets as in 6v6 its actually possible to kill a tank as lucio. (Im not saying thats the rule for him, but still)
Yes. Oh well just add him to the list of characters that had to lose everything that made them fun and special to force this format. The lucio players can go cry in the corner with the ana and mercy players now ig
trying to fix tank and make it work has genuinely ruined so many heroes its insane. i know 5v5 can probably work but the amount of things they have to do to make it work is staggering, they haven’t even scratched the surface of it. going back to 6v6 would also take a lot of work even if its significantly less… i think players overestimate how much they have to do for that tho. but both options seem like they would need to do quite a lot of things. and either way it would divide the community. the transition into overwatch 2 is whats making it so difficult, that was the mistake that was made above all else.
They have been going the exact wrong direction with how to balance tanks in 5v5. They should have made them squishier with more ways to outplay CC with skill expression. Instead they just made them bigger and unkillable. At this point going back to 6v6 would be way better.
I had a lot of fun on Lucio during season 9, I was able to dps a lot and I noticed my accuracy did go up but the damage nerfs in season 10 have made me not want to dps as I lose fights I would have won in season 9. I agree they should nerf his speed and/or add another speed support so Lucio isn’t a must pick and they can bring his kill power back up
I honestly love seeing the OW 1 gameplay. you can see how much better the game was when you actually had to use strategy and didnt get oneshot every 5 seconds.
If you're still getting one-shot, that might be on you. The global health buffs directly nerfed oneshots and maybe only one character in the came can still do it. Also oneshots were still very much in ow1 between mercy pocketed ashe, widow, and hanzo, and the hog hook
No, you were getting one shot A LOT. The difference? They didn’t remove a fucking tank. And now even dps is getting affected by 5v5 because their identities are being removed from the game.
This is an eskay essay.
a video eskay
An Esskay if you will
@@BelphegorXVIno, not esskay..
But also not asskay @@rinor3303
"I am a glorified Torbjorn turret" is so real
The OW one gameplay is insane. Genji deflected the Zaria graviton, SK Boop up the Rhine to get the diva bomb to hit more players. That is such an amazing clip.
Meanwhile. now we have mauga gameplay
I would end a life to get OW1 back with these current heroes (Not mine tho, I gotta play the game)
That was just a better game in terms of gameplay offering, anyone who doesn't acknowledge that is delusional
@@TheRealKush420I will be the sacrifice, kill me 🫡
@@TheRealKush420Why did you have to make that distinction? I’m here for you bro 😂
Sheesh, watching that 6v6 footage made me realize how much I used to love this game. It's sad.
Let me go back. Overwatch 1 characters felt like actual characters then.
I don't miss Goats but I do miss OW1. For me pre and post competitive seasons of Sombra being first added were the most fun of the game in the history
@@willwunsche6940 Even with I believe emp and hack locking u out of ur abilities for 5 seconds… I would take that with two tanks over this current sombra with one tank.
@@willwunsche6940wait u mention GOATS but not dbl shield 😂 GOATS would’ve been fine if it didn’t last so long
@@teencorn9169 I mentioned it because it was the 6v6 footage included in the video this comment was talking about.
Honestly I'd be fine to occasionally retry most metas in some magical Minecraft launcher style patch version system, as long as the main game is always accessible
My fear for Lucio is space ranger. Its already been confirmed that she will be the second support to have one of their signature utilities be speed boosting while also having decent verticality as well.
I like competition but I'm afraid this will begin an unhealthy competition now that Lucio won't bring such a unique value anymore.
Just like venture is a different doom, space ranger is possibly a different lucio. Next we'll have a tank with a baseball bat instead of a hammer to replace rein.
If they manage to make her fill a different niche while having this utility, then it would actually be healthy and stop him from being a must pick, which is something people asked for a long time ago. Fact is, him being the only support with speed boosting capabiltiies is forcing him to get nerfs that remove fun from his gameplay.
Rip brother. Juno is revealed.
Homing attacks, AND an ability to speed boost the whole team, AND the ability to fly, . This character seems to be made to directly counter lucio.
@@ProfessionalSoapEater except Juno is very weak to getting dove onto unlike Lucio, the characters represent different playstyles.
Losing play styles & taking away player agency (in favor of passive value) seem to be constant outcomes of the current balance philosophy... 🤔
That’s what I’ve been thinking recently as well, it’s honestly sad
Playing the game is so much less exciting now. Less variation, less possibility of combos (even miss halt/hooking with a friend). I’m not excited for skins anymore, or trying cool strategies with a group because it’s geared towards individual deathmatch gameplay
They turning the game into Halo in a fancy suit.
Reminds me of one of the last times i played ow a few months ago, my friends wanted to play that mayhem mode in arcade where theres no cds. The entire match was one big fight over a point that ended with a draw because like 2 people died the whole game. My friends somehow found that peek gameplay
Current format*
I feel bad that the BALANCE team is getting shit on. How can they be expected to balance an unbalanceable format?
This entire game has lost its magic in my opinion
Because this dogshit format is removing the identity of heroes one by one to make it work and it still doesn’t. I had more fun playing assassin Hanzo against the impenetrable double shield or unstoppable goats comp than I do in the game. Well, did, because I’m not playing this dogshit anymore. Magic completely gone
But I thought 5v5 gave more playstyle options, it’s crazy how since ow2 came out every hero from the original game has lost their identity, totally a coincidence
Gee, how about that ✨🤷♀️🤔✨
😂
Nah man, connecting the dots and analysing the game is something only flat earthers do! /s
Yeah it's crazy, it's almost like giga buffing a solo tank and support abilities makes the whole game about play denying and poke rather than playmaking and dive 🤔 who thought that would be the case 🤯
tbf 6v6 and 5v5 both have plus and negatives cant win ether way reallly my biggest issue with 5v5 is if you have a bad tank it nearly always just automatic loss
As a long lucio player, yeah things are rough lol. The game itself is going in a direction that doesnt reward high risk for high reward which puts lucio on the same path, which realy sucks. Having lucio as a character that could do flashy plays only if they were good enough to do always strived me to do better, but the way things are going its hard to try and find things to improve on.
11:37 this is how Blizzard wants every OW2 interaction to go. Endless stalemates without resolution. Every hero with enough hp and free resources so you can always survive. They want it so that you can have perfect mechanical execution but it falls just short of actually getting an elimination. OW2 is bowling with bumpers. 5v5 issue bring back 6v6
whats even worst is the map designs ,even though lucio is supose to be on the walls all the recent map have sight and a lot of obstacules in the wat making him play on the ground
Another huge issue: if lucio team speed boost is nerfed, will he be the worst support? He does less damage and less healing than other supports for long range poke comps, brig is way better at protecting her teammates, and other supports provide more utility if speed boost is bad. So how do you make him fun without gutting him? I still find him kind of fun, but it’s nothing like he used to be. I think if I had the same dueling potential I had pre-s9, that would be enough
Maybe revert the damage nerf (pretty unfair) and slightly nerf the crossfade team stats
Maybe if they change how he functions with and without speed boost. When he is on healing he shoots 10 % slower and 1 less projectile and when he is speeding he shoots 10% faster and 1 extra projectile. Amp up maybe should do an initial burst healing on heal and maybe charge an extra powerful boop that can be held for 2 seconds. I think something along those lines could make his gameplay more fun. They should have also left his alt damage in. That was fun when we had it.
My accuracy hasn't changed either BTW. I didn't notice the projectiles getting fatter.
IMO, he's unfortunately a victim of Blizzard's power creep design philosophy. The only real way to make him fun again without making him oppressive is to nerf the power creep back down to manageable levels. Health pools, damage, healing, abilities; they all need to be nerfed so that individual ability can shine again. And maybe stop making ridiculous supports like Brig/Bap/Kiri who can just do EVERYTHING so EASILY.
I feel the auras should grow to about Inspire wide, but remain as tall as they are today. That would loosen the shackle to the team, while avoiding skybox Lucio shenanigans. You could also make speed boosting rarer by buffing the healing aura or by degrading the effect of continued exposure.
@@diametheuslambdaHow to gut Lucio 101
I’ve felt this, but didn’t know why it was suddenly so much harder to dps lucio and win. I’ve been playing with my team too and it’s been really boring. Thanks for the insight, I’m gonna go flank in some ranked games. :D
Been feeling the same way on Lucio lately but didn't know how to say it. This video gets it out perfectly. One of the main problems being that i feel like my high technical skill on lucio doesnt even matter when their lucio just sits in the back and farms beat first. Like Eskay said, It seems like they can't allow lucio to be individually good because of his high team value, being the only speed boosting support. Maybe Space Ranger will help if she is a speed boost character which would make it so lucio isnt the only pick if you need speed
The problem with EVERY other hero. I bet you I’d describe a Hanzo in EXACTLY the same way you spoke about Lucio but you’d have problems with it when they both suffered from the same issue that 5v5 brings.
And it’s that the increase individual value requires so many heroes to lose all or most of their identities and that’s the curse of 5v5.
I feel like Lucio is only played so much because of his speedboost. As soon as Juno comes out with a similar boost, but more fun to play and more healing, then Lucio will become obsolete and you will never see him anymore. And when you do other roles will get mad for picking a ''bad character''. Like what happened with Zenyatta and Lifeweaver.
I still truly believe that the biggest issue with balance in this game, is the sheer amount of heroes, and the apparent need to keep adding new ones. You are never going to solve an equation if you keep adding variables. That seems to me like a pretty fundamental principle in math.
All of what u said is true. Even illari is more threatening with her boop and she’s literally a hit scan
Don’t forget she has a second support in her pocket that she could place where no one from the enemy team can see it!
This is less of a “Lucios magic is gone” and more of a “blizzard took away all our toys cus they plan to die on the 5v5 hill”
True and I'm curious to know where Eskay stands rn because she pointed at the changes brought by 5v5 as what "killed" Lucio, but a while back she defended 5v5 so maybe her opinion changed.
OW2 Balance as a whole:
pls replace this balance team. it's so sad
@@Aentismik replace the balance team in every game, oh wait.
I HATE how the balance team is getting blamed for this! It’s not their fault. The format is unbalanceable and they have to make tanks the way they are and they have to remove so many things to attempt to make it work and it still doesn’t.
It’s a game direction issue.
@@RIP_ZYZZ1738 it's more than that. The changes they make don't make any sense. Format aside. I've played since 2016 and these devs don't have the same heart anymore
@@Aentismik The old devs were vegetables what are you talking about? They’re updating more and the old team stumbled upon this game by accident.
The changes they make won’t make a difference and they’re trying anything to fix an unpatchable problem
Lucio has been the one thing that consistently brings me back to playing overwatch because of how unique his movement is and how fun he is to play aggressively. If the only viable playstyle is to walk around like a bot I see no reason to return to overwatch.
same
same
Same but for Hanzo. Assassin playstyle kept me playing for so much longer.
It frankly highlights an issue with the whole game.
Ana, sleep dart nerfs.
Hanzo, ult nerf, no one shot. Numerous characters have completely lost identity.
Tbf, i don’t think anyone is upset about not being one shot other than the people DOING the oneshotting. For example, I literally refuse to touch hanzo, because the VERY FIRST TIME I ever touched the character, I got four kills, all headshots, and I saw a total of… None of them. The only reason I knew how I even got the kills was when the “play of the game” screen came up. You could see my visible confusion, that I was just randomly shooting and things were dying. You shouldn’t be able to do that brother, that was the least fun I’ve probably ever had in my life on overwatch and we were WINNING 😭🙏
@@meat3958 but now I can preform the best shots learn to play the character to much, headshot this ana who doesnt notice me and she looks at me. and walks away cause what am i gonna do. i have the longest ttk in the entire game pass my ability now. everything hanzo can do relys on storm arrow, tank pressure, and actual threat to the enemy, it all its related to a cd. like litteraly if you dont have a mercy pocket your entire gameplay loop is spam tank and then cd is up i have to choose do i use this for some potential threat or spam tank (its litteraly 90% of the time better to spam tank) so then i spam tank and thats all you can ever do on hanzo. hanzo is litteraly a worse widow in almost every aspect that just has a better cd. multiple times today I have gotten these actual predictions, these good flicks that have resulted in my death because i cant oneshot these threatning targets or even take advantage of oblivious targets.
if hanzo feels so terrible why do i still play him? Cause who he should be in theory is badass, how his weapon feels is so unqiue you cant get that basically anywhere. but I now just hate playing this game cause i really cant ever apply real pressure anywhere anymore
Hanzo deserved that nerf tho, his one shot felt so boring and cheap for everyone involved
@@meat3958 Wouldn't that apply to so many things, though? Noone would miss getting hacked, except the sombra herself. Noone would miss getting frozen, discorded, slept, pharah boop, Lucio boop, etc if they remove it.
@@meat3958 I dont disagree with this, I think "bad designs" like one shotting, and many other chars I dont enjoy like sombra with her hack, would not be complained about being hard nerfed.
The problem, especially in 5v5 when things like one shot are much more impactful hence needing a more needed nerf, you end up destroying the char with no real rework concept, just number changes.
So like the original comment said, numerous chars have "lost" their identity. Doesnt matter if they feel better to be worse in the game, its the fact they keep these chars with no soul in the game for the sake of not removing them or going through the effort of reworking them properly
Does anyone else feel like since the season 9 hitbox changes, dodging damage on lucio is extremely difficult. I feel like if the enemy can see me they will probably do damage to me. For me in overwatch 1, some of the joy i got from playing lucio came from using my movement to actually affect the outcome of a fight instead of just for changing position to somewhere more advantageous. Its not like i cant play lucio anymore but it certainly makes him much less fun, same with all of his other nerfs.
Yeah absolutely. I feel like there's way more pressure to play safely since it's so easy for a cass to walk up and two tap me. I can't get creative with movement as much anymore. The only time I can really have fun and duel people is when I'm playing on my alt with my friends, but at that point I'm basically smurfing.
I dont mind boop being reverted back & give back his primary gun damage back idk was around s10 when they nerfed his oreos but gave the boop a packed a punch thundergun.
Watching the OW1 Lucio gameplay really makes me miss him. I used to love going for an aggro play and booping a tank/Rein out of position. Now if I try that the tank barely moves and I get two tapped before I can even escape :(
DUDE being able to spawncamp people on Ilios without them hearing us coming from the other side of the map, or waiting for the supports to leave thee spawn and actually killing them, damn if anything you could spawncamp tanks too.
I love hearing your insights. You continue to be the realest overwatch content creator around. Keep being awesome
Ah, so that's why Tracers have been more of a problem for me. I feel like that should be the floor of lucio, "is he able to duel tracer"
same.
Well the definition of “duel Tracer” depends here. I don’t think he was ever able to stick on the ground and win but Redshell type people could by being Lucio gods.
And now even Lucio gods can’t 1v1 tracer like they could before.
@@RIP_ZYZZ1738 well I definitely can't duel tracers at the level of their rank but the tracers at my rank i could duel more easily before.
Yeah I've been struggling with that too. I feel like I should be the one peeling for my other support, but in practice I get focused by the tracer and feel pretty helpless.
They’re just watering down all the heroes. Symmetra, Mei, Lucio etc….
Its almost as if games are more fun with greater amounts of chaos which forces collaboration, and enables niches to shine. I miss ow1 not because of nostalgia but because the game enabled a myriad of strategies to get to the same point. Now that the game is more focused the allure of discovery has died with it and thus we are in the cycle of Nerf/Buff flavor of the month!
Facts Facts Facts
And now since 5v5 ruined the experience for tanks, my experience as a Hanzo player is ruined in turn because they HAVE to remove one shot so that he’s no oppressive in this format. But that gutted his identity at the same time.
This format was a mistake.
I know tracer has always been like lucio, pretty powerful, and i know she's still very much a good pick but...as a tracer main i feel the same. I remember when i could be totally aggresive, and just because i had good mechanics and awareness i could come out on top while still playing with the team...now i feel like the only way that i can do plays rn is to play pretty passively, waiting for a huge engage from my team so i can get in, since hitboxes, hp and bullet sizes were increased, now everyone can just hit you as you approach them.
lucio is a hero that was special due to his movement in a game where no character has to just walk anymore. We looked at the powercreep in the game and got "we just buff everyone cause people get mad at nerfs" as a response
The especially scary part of Lucio right now is that there was a fair bit of heavy hinting about Space Ranger "making battles faster" and "having something only one support has", which sounds a lot like speed boost
Lucio's mainly stayed strong meta of high-tier play because of the utility of speed in organized play. Adding a hero who also has speed, and different utility, while Lucio is in the state that he's in, could entirely push him out of relevancy, which would really suck cause he's a super interesting character to have in the game
My experience with lucio is kinda interesting. I played him a LOT seasons 1-8, and I'd say I was fairly good at him for where I was at. When season 9 hit, I *tried* to play him more, but I just couldn't do, anything, and ended up switching to other supports. I can still play him well when I need to, but where I was once a hard lucio main in support, I'm now someone who barely touches him, cause I feel like I can't do anything, even if I'm decent at him, and it sucks
id like to look at this from the glass half full perspective, i really hope space ranger gets a speed boost, not so lucio can lose what makes him unique now, but so the devs realize how bad lucio becomes after that. I hope they then give lucio individual power. because yes i agree that lucio is good because of speed. let me make dumb plays that may work, just give me the tools to do it, and let people that want to play how he is being played now still play him. just, not this half baked shell of what he once was.
I'm really not looking forward to space ranger taking up the same niche as Lucio since he's always felt like a bit of a 'lightning in a bottle' character where they got pretty much everything right about him and I HIGHLY doubt they'd be able to do it again with their current hero design and balance philosophy
@@milk903 Oh I agree, I think giving another hero who has speed may help, but it may not. My hope is that with another hero having speed they'll be more willing to nerf Lucio's speed instead of the other fun parts of him. I feel like the devs are super hesitant to nerf speed cause "it's in a good spot" and it's such an important ability, but it's caused them to hit Everything Else about Lucio to nerf him instead of the thing that actually nerfs his power, which just lowers his skill ceiling
@@DragonReborn71 just curious, what are your thoughts now that Juno's playtest is done?
@@starrysky8118 on the one hand I'm feeling like less of a doomer now that I see her entire kit in motion. On the other hand, even though the test seemed to be pretty balanced I'm concerned with how they'll change her going forward since I imagine her performance is going to differ greatly between low and high rank play and trying to balance her for one demographic may ruin the equilibrium of her kit, (take the Venture nerfs when they dominated low ranks on release or Bastion buffs that caused him to be meta as examples), and have more of an effect on the characters that share the same utility as her
please save Lucio Nation eskay
I feel like this is a reoccurring theme with overwatch 2. Things are functional, things are as they are intended to be, the game can be played, but none of it is fun. Tanks weren't unpowered last patch but they sure felt like shit to play. Lucio isn't bad, just isn't fun to play anymore. Ranked works better then the card system did, but ranked still doesn't feel good to play. I feel like blizzard needs to focus more on actual fun and making the game feel good to play rather then just constant numbers rebalancing all the time.
As always, such a well thought out opinion. Great job articulating everything. I do feel like there is room to make those suggested changes. Lucio isn't even the sole character with a speed boost anymore. And I much prefer when Lucio is more active in the game than passive. I feel like wall ride doesn't have a purpose, if you need to just sit behind your tank all game shooting Frisbees across the map. I'm not even a Lucio player, I play tank. Everytime I died to Lucio boop, I know it's just my positioning that allows it.
Sorry my guy, but what do you mean with wall ride having no purpose? It's literally his next best thing😮
@@KURENANI I think it's the best part of his kit. Read after the comma, I'm saying I don't think it has too much of a purpose if you just need to sit behind your tank and play with your other support
I hope you continue making videos like this! I love your insight and often times both you and frogger tend to say my thoughts in a much better way than i ever could. Ive missed old lucio so much and this made me feel like my feelings are valid.
What is most bizarre and egregious is that Blizzard have the data to know who mains which character, like Eskay with Lucio, so they could easily identify the expert opinion needed when making balance changes for any hero - and they don’t.
In any other industry that requires building complex systems with many moving parts, experts are identified and connected to the process of development.
✨🤷♀️✨
Players are good at feeling and noticing when something feels off, but they're not good at offering solutions to these problems.
@@penrilfake and what about devs that do neither?
Blizzard really should listen to pros and coaches more. Spilo in particular has some of the best design takes imo
i used to love lucio. i came back to grinding ranked after a few months and hated having to healbot. i thought that i had changed and just didnt enjoy the hero anymore, but its sad to see how much our frog boy has changed
I didn't really understand why I stopped playing him recently, but this seems to sum it up pretty well. The tank boop passive started the erasure of his identity, and it hasn't gotten any better since.
5:11 holy shit that pocket by the Ana on the Ashe was crazy. I love watching Overwatch 1 pro play 😢.
Lucio is in a real bad state right now. I'm a mid/high masters player since rank reset and have been a low/mid GM in pasts seasons and even tho I imagine in real high ranks is worse, Lucio has become much more boring this pasts months. Its clear that is a structural problem that came with 5v5 but even so he has been nerfed and I dont understand why his primarly meta ability hasn't been touched. With this said, I still think there is hope for Lucio and those of us who like to play it: with the release of Space Ranger (another speed boost character) and the discussion of 6v6 on Blizzards table I hope Lucio can get to where he was before or at least a better state. Stay strong Lucios
PD: Kiriko is Brigitte 2.0, cleanse and tp are the single worst cds since Brigitte's release, please #DeleteKiriko
tbh i feel like a lot of ow1 characters lost that magic in ow2 but I especially agree with everything you said regarding lucio
The thing is, we all miss Overwatch 1
It’s almost as if all the changes have been slowly forcing all heroes in each role to play more and more similar to each other and decreasing the amount of variety in hero kits.
Blizzard devs: His pick and win rate are within a healthy range what are you all complaining about?
I’ve been feeling this for a bit; I was playing some esports for my school team and even with the most hours being on Lucio, I felt I had more impact with Lifeweaver of all supports. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even queue support anymore because of the lack of impact.
#Iamaglorifiedtorbjornturret
Hopefully space ranger has speed so they can buff the rest of lucios kit and not kill him for the sins of speed boost
I wouldn’t be surprised if space ranger did have some sort of speed mechanic and they’re making Lucio kinda shitty to make space ranger seem like a bit of a better pick when they come out
Mercy is in a similar dilemma. They have made her way less fun and have forced a playstyle of being on the ground and holding dmg boost on one DPS. Yet, the devs will never touch her.
Yes, even though I’m way lower (peaked Diamonds last Season), I feel a lot of these!! As someone who swapped to Lucio after ow2, I just feel like a spectator now and I don’t even know how you’d fix that. These last few seasons make him not fun anymore, where before if I wasn’t having fun I’d switch to Lucio because that guaranteed I’d have fun.
Welcome to how Mercy players feel
They are also adding another speedboost support hero next so its like they are trying to kill him 😢🐸
That Volskaya footage sure was a blast from the past
The part about not really participating anymore is so true
As a Tracer main I agree with you when it comes to the Lucio duel. It was a fun interaction but now with the projectile changes the Lucio’s I face play a lot more safer and it’s not really fun when you’re fighting each other and neither of you are dying. But in general duels just aren’t fun anymore when they get suzu or life gripped and it feels awful.
I main lucio and have been learning tracer and I agree from both sides.
I call this "the brig-ification of overwatch". Brig-ification - removing all skill expression until the hero becomes Brig, stand next to people, spectate, and use mostly 1 button and mostly left click. Hero's that have been brigified: Mercy, Zen, Ana is halfway there, Hanzo, genji, Mauga, they are working on ball..., the list goes on.
Im glad i play qp alot so I dont have to deal with most of this stuff, I just go silly
ngl I don't feel this, sure 1v1s are harder but they are still winnable if you get the jump on them, don't feel like the skates are that loud you just need to manage the sound by changing wallride style
It feels like macro matters way more so the windows for redditing are very small, maybe your midfight wallriding is inefficient?
Also on the feeling like diffs don't exist, they absolutely do, output gapping the other lucio requires mechanics to get the extra value
idk if this is a hot take, but lucio is similar to mercy in the way that the utility the hero provides is more for the team and not for the benefit of the lucio/mercy. When your team doesnt capitalize on your utility, then you basically aren't really doing much.
You know, this explains why I’ve felt like I’ve only been good playing with my team. I thought I was just bad, because I’m not a great player, most of the roster doesn’t work for me because I have absolutely dreadful aim. It was especially a problem because I watch Frogger and kept thinking "Surely you don’t need to be that aggressive to be good" but it’s good to know this is an experience that’s true for most people.
Why was it fun in ow1? 6v6... im bored out of my mind playing support in 5v5
I never played overwatch one but seeing 6v6 gameplay makes me realize how much better it is compared to 5v5
As an ex Lucio main I've been feeling this, I surely am getting worse, playing less but Lucio feels just less fun
10:50 this happened with Mei too. It went from Mei being an actual threat to Tracer to Tracer being a threat to Mei :(
Overwatch 2 audio is extremely weird, sometimes even Reaper's and Mauga's foot stomps are more silent than a ana walking
If space ranger comes out with a speed boosting ability I’m afraid he’s going to fade away into obscurity
I think Lucio needs competition for the role of team taxi. If they don't Blizzard should adjust the throughput of his speed aura.
Allow him to remain individually powerful and lessen the effect of his speed aura on teammates OR give him competition.
Just stop making him individually less impactful when that's not the issue. Getting jumped and shit on by Lucio sucks but everyone that plays OW2 knows how hard that is
lol losing 10% of boop makes Lucio not fun? *sad Hanzo noises*
At least your favourite hero has been meta for years. Imagine how other people feel, especially Tank players, who are constantly forced on heroes they don't want to play. From Orisa, to Hog, to Mauga, it sucks. This is literal prison.
Every single tank has had a one trick hit rank 1 over overwatch 2’s lifespan
@@ExtraEskay Just as there have been numerous Lucio onetricks reaching rank 1, and far more dominating the Top500 leaderboards. That doesn't meaning anything. Lucio thrives both in high ELO play as well as pro play, and has been meta for years.
Just because someone else's heroes are also in a bad place doesn't mean that Lucio players aren't allowed to critique the balance team when they misstep with changes to him, especially because he's long been agreed upon as a rare cornerstone of ACTUAL balance where his strength comes from very high skill expression and team coordination. Lucio often being meta doesn't mean he's op, just that he fills a niche that nobody else can, and the constant nerfs are just going to add him into the growing list of characters getting worthless tweaks every season only for those to be reverted again right after, which is also why we keep getting back to back miserable tank metas. This video isn't just about Lucio not being fun, it's about how the devs have yet again removed much of the depth of a character through nerfs because the only effective playstyle is passive spamming and beat farming
@@ExtraEskayrelying on outliers to prove a point, nice...
so we have ball rein hanzo reaper lucio, overwatch is really struggling with character identity and its lowkey scary
Ball rein hanzo reaper lucio junkrat roadhog doomfist zarya cassidy bastion genji mercy.
@@OlmeuuAnd the saddest part, coming from a Hanzo main, is that the balance team HAS to do this to even attempt balancing this unbalanceable format. This is a game direction issue. Aaron Keller has been nothing but pretty good/decent but one huge flaw he has is that he seemingly never speaks about the negative of the game. Never talks about mistakes they’ve made, they just move past it like nothing happened.
Thank you for mentioning this. this nerf felt very unecessary and confusing. a hotfix for their tank buffs nerfs lucio?? how? except i don't think his speed boost needs a nerf. It requires the team to be with him which doesn't always happen and when it does it is risky as clumping up can make the team vulnerable to a lot of ults and abilites.
In OW2, it feels like there's more abilities that UNDO things than there are abilities that actually DO something
I’m only platinum on support (I main bap), but since the new tank change, most supports feel like torb turrets.
In my rank, most games are both teams hiding behind there tank until someone gets a pick. if I try to get a pick, the enemy tank starts to roll through my team lol.
THE MOST SUCCESS IVE HAD THIS SEASON IS PLAYING BAP LIKE HES BRIGG! Protecting my other support and only shooting when my tank need to recover their cool downs. It’s so boring man.
I mean is this just not a format issue? Not trying to beat a dead horse here, the issue of the format should be taken into consideration with the context of hero design. All of Eskays points were valid, I mean the games just not fun when Godzilla is running at your immobile team with their own Lucio. We’ve damn near had Lucio/Kiri meta for 11 seasons, does that not mean anything?
Lucio hasnt been fun either, I play main support but prefer Brig because I dont want to be a torb turret. Im not an expert but I do feel like 5v5 could work because we had JOATS, Brig JOATS to be exact. Not trying to mislead here but it felt like Brig was that 2nd tank Lucio could speed around and she had ways to mitigate JQs cooldowns (not necessarily in a 1v1).
I would say the right call to make is not to make Lucio depend on only speeding the tank around 90% of the time and shift that power around. But its hard to say because removing power from the tank just leads to Bastion ripping ass and nuking tanks. Which kind of leads to what I mentioned at the beginning, these heros were designed for 6v6. Not taking the time to fully redesign heros/maps for 1 less tank really fucked with the game and playstyles.
Sadly this is just what 5v5 balance philosophy (or lack thereof) has done to the game. Who could have saw this problem of heroes losing their identities coming? RIP Overwatch if they don't change course ASAP.
For the Lucio accuracy: they also specifically nerfed Lucio's projectile speed back in the hotfix after the S9 changes while making the majority of other heroes vastly easier to hit shots with.
I kind of don't agree that Lucio needs/needed nerfs; it's that we need more speed boost based supports with their own separate niches, imo and this was something that was called out years ago. And on that topic, I find it crazy that in the patch where everyone got more HP and easier to land shots, Lucio ended up losing damage lmao
In overwatch 1 Lucio was easily my main. I was a lucio one trick who consistently got 3-4 gold (ik stats dont matter) and the one time I almost got 5 gold my friend who was genji got gold on objective time at the last second (ironic). In OW 2 I pretty much never touch my boy. If I play him the way I used to I explode and now I can go an entire night without an environmental kill wheras in 1 It was at least one a game in maps you can. Lucio lost the sauce that made him so addicting. He still has movement that scratches my ADHD brain but I cant make full use of his movement to fight cause I have to be passive. Completely lost his identity.
As a flex dps player, specially I was a junk rat main. The nerf of the combo made junk rats fun playstyle imposible and were left with the low skill annoying style that is spamming. Same as Lucio nerf making it not buyable to go in assassin a style and get out which people would agree is the fun playstyle of Lucio. No one has fun sitting on Burger King Lucio on the back line just healing
1:53 "Other people make it work but I feel bad when I play like that so I won't"
Well shit.
Other Tracers shoot people in the face, but I feel bad doing that, so I don't. ***Tracer lost her magic***
Ah yes now we care about heroes losing their identity. I’m sitting over here playing hanzo who is a SNIPER that can’t 1 shot shit and lost his SNIPER identity and is now brainless spam.hero . Now we complain about hero identities being lost
And due to 1 shot being lost I lost so many different play styles and can only really be a spam bot without a mercy pocket
litterally me with mercy rn :(. i start at ow2 so idk what ow1 mercy is like though i played a bit ow1 with practice against ai cause i have 0 experience and he was diamo from my brother acc. but even though at s2, my mercy movement sucked and still healed a lot, i had fun on her but much less now maybe after more than a year just bored but i felt a sharp difference. mercy wasnt the same, her movement was buffed i think to match ow2 movement creep then they nerf it which HUH? i get she is on the easier side which i dont deny and she doesnt really have any playmake abilities like lucio or other supports but they kinda screw her up and i get she is annoying to play against. Now i just feel sitting back and wait for a flank to come at me and pray that i live instead of flying to my aggressive dps or tank to help them win their dual cause the projectile buff just makes me explode. she is suppose to be one of the most mobile support but sometimes i feel kiriko is even more mobile than mercy, idk if its just me. I hate that overwatch 2 is making jacks of all trades character more than heroes that focus on a very niche. like the ow2 heroes, most of them dont accel in a niche but they are in general strong or playable, (LW is a diff case), and most heroes now have free escape jail card like venture, LW, moira, kiriko, ram with nemesis, etc. With all the overhealth, speed boost, emergency healing, like its almost i get bring back to life almost instantly but mercy dont have that, i get she has her movement and leech passive but its not instant like other supports. and dmg boost doesnt even feel viable anymore, it just feels like a sidegrade to kiriko dmg. And they indirectly nerf the skill expression on dmg since overwatch 2 heroes abilites when get dmg boost before it gets activate then get used but mercy turns off dmg boost, the ability doesnt get dmg boost the whole way like sojourn aoe, jq wound, ram nemesis so it doesnt rewards u timed out when to dmg boost the person, rn its a small cast of heroes but in the future.... Valk doesnt even feel like an ult, its just there, imo it fits mercy when she paid the premium subscription and able to zoom around but it doesnt feel impactly, the team wide dmg boost and heals that get nullify by the dps passive and its not burst heal, and u want to use valk when its a 5v4 ideally not even a 5v5 just to secure the fight, exception applies ofc. and the other cases using valk to save urself, i find it fun or to stall which doesnt feel viable when u have to touch the payload and no ally to ga to so the enemies are on the payload so they shoot u down easily. Come to think about it, kiriko kinda powercreep mercy in a way, she has great movement tp that goes through wall, wall climb for vertical movement. suzu is like res but better, kitsune is a better valk offensively and defensively, kiriko dmg when good aim does outperform dmg boost, mercy saving a person when they need can just be done by kiriko that tp in, suzu, pocket heals, dmg the enemy to reduce their pressure and it becomes a 2v1 and her heals is more bursty than mercy. mercy healing change in s3 is suppose to be accomodate her triage playstyle a guardian angel but her movement was nerf so she couldnt get their to triage heal then they remove the healing change, it was op but i thought it was a good idea but they just scrap instead of a nerf, it added depth to her heals, which rewards mercy who heal to 50% hp then dmg boost to let the other support finish off the heals. Now even with healing someone, i feel like they still die and just feed the enemy
i mean, you aren't forced to play passive on any character- different patches just optimize different playstyles. if we were to stumble into another JQ rush meta, playmaking on lucio would be more valuable once again. if playing passive kills your enjoyment of the character and game entirely, you have the free will to swap or run it down, you just won't win nearly as much
i'm bronze, so take this how you want, but my experience is really about the same. this season i feel so much less able to *do* anything. if someone dives my ana i can't protect her, all i can really do is boop, speed, and hope unless the dps diving us is absolute dog water. similarly i can't make any individual plays. like how is the most fun i've had this season just following a jq around, speeding her up? i don't even smile when i get ilios anymore.
kinda sad how even GOATs (which while liked by many is also hated by a massive number of people) looks like a better and more enjoyable game than OW2
my biggest problem with lucio is how consistently you have to play him to stay good at him. OW2 just isnt fun enough to do that anymore espacially since every hero has close to no weakness and there are no drawbacks to mistakes anymore
Oh no, the support that’s meant to stay close to their team to get optimal value has to stay close to their team to get optimal value, just say you have a massive skill issue, if you can’t adapt then you’re the issue, don’t know what else to say 🤷🏻♂️
everyone lost their magic in ow2
If you stopped being stubborn with your opinion about the state of the game, you’d realize the entire game has lost its magic
Back in overwatch one, Lucio was the only chracter I played. I barely play him any more. They somehow managed to make a wall riding skater boy less engaging than an old lady that literally puts you to sleep.
yeah i’ve been feeling this for the last season or so. i haven’t watched your video yet though because i think i will cry if i do
Is this is a pro 6v6 video from eskay???? 🤔🤔
Might finally be
a lot of heroes lost the magic with the change of format, Ball, Lucio, Hanzo, Dva, the list goes longer
Hey you know what would help literally every one of your points?
Bring back 6v6.
I dont wanna be that person but... thats prob a format issue, one less tank means support gotta peal more for other support
I think as a tank player the issue isnt how strong the tank itself is its that there is no damage mitigation from anyone but a single tank. giving other roles skillful dmg mitigation (or adding a 2nd tank) would do so much for the freedom of all roles. tanks could be balanced and not need to constantly beg for healing, supports could do more than healbot, and dps wouldnt just spam a tank doing nothing
I completely entirely agree, i couldnt even put it into these many words but you decsribed exactly how it feels to play lucio rn, you have so little impact and I literally only ever take duals now when weve lost a fight and i need to reset lol. Honestly the most fun part of most lucio games now is the rollout from spawn to the fight
honestly the same thing happened to mercy. Playing her is just being a dmgboost bot now. All her other playstyles are no longer viable and are outclassed by other supports. I just stopped playing her and thus the game aswell bc its no longer fun even if mercy was giga busted at times just heal or dmgboost botting, sitting behind your ash or hanzo isnt fun.
so after gathering my thoughts for a bit, for me mercy died at the begining of overwatch2 where they replaced her superjump bug with the ability she has now. I did not realise it at the time bc it was sth new and shiny to play with but just like you i spent hundrets of hours perfecting my superjumps. All of my trainging has been turned into a button. Yes it was a bug and yes the abiliry was made to make it easier to use mercys jump but whyy?. Not everyone should be able to hit every headshot on widow not everyone should be able to do every rollout on doom or lucio. Yes mercy is a "beginner" character but that was the beauty of old SJ, it gave depth to an on paper very easy hero. New mercy players didnt even know it existed. Good mercy players knew but were usually using it as positioning and dying alot getting cought in the air. And great players were using it as a repositioning tool to get to good positions on the map and support even the deepest dives by say genji, that was fun bc it was high risk high reward. Now you press a button and do the same thing. And now everyone was so good at it that they nerfed the cooldown to almost 4 seconds... Like if you make sth so easy to do, example give widow aimbot as an abilty and eveyone starts hitting headshots, ofc you will need to nerf the abilty to do headshot kills. And now bc they nerfed her movement after making it not be a skill expression anymore.. your gameplay is to stand behing a wall boost your *insert dps here* and wait till they get rolled by the enemy dps than hit E and repeat. Yes the ability itself if alot more powerful that old SJ but thats the thing i and most other mercy players dont want the hero to be broken we want the hero to be fun to play.. I feel like alot of heros have lost their magic with ow2 and lucio is just another one added to the list.
To be honest I took a break from overwatch for a bit, and came back as a Lucio main. And I tried to just play how I used to and thought I just got a lot worse, but this video made me realize that I feel this same way when it comes to Lucio. Just ain't as fun as he used to be and I hope they fix it :(
perhaps all this problems started with a flawed formatt. Just sayin...
yeah i feel the same way, i just play quick play nowadays and play that perma aggressive playstyle for fun cause it literally just does not work in ranked anymore
This season as a lucio one trick has been weird for me. I’ve had a 55%- 67% win rate every season since S4. But with this one, 8 hours in and I have a 32% win rate. It could just be a bad lose streak but there’s a lot of moments when I’m getting pushed hard by an aggressive dva and my boop just does nothing to them and I’m dead. Or a couple games where if tank boop actually did something EVEN THO they’re on the edge then my team would’ve won the last fight
I'm experiencing the same. Low masters Lucio, usually with a 54-56% WR over nearly every other season, this season struggling to maintain 50%. It's really, really shit.
Isnt this a problem chained to 5v5 though?
All of these problems go away if we revert the hp and hitbox changes in I think season 9 and go back to a 6v6 format where lucio got effectively 2 more potential targets as in 6v6 its actually possible to kill a tank as lucio. (Im not saying thats the rule for him, but still)
Yes. Oh well just add him to the list of characters that had to lose everything that made them fun and special to force this format. The lucio players can go cry in the corner with the ana and mercy players now ig
Sounds like data-driven decision making has homogenized the game.
Every game for me now is me running straight to their back line and see how long I can live and roll the dice
trying to fix tank and make it work has genuinely ruined so many heroes its insane. i know 5v5 can probably work but the amount of things they have to do to make it work is staggering, they haven’t even scratched the surface of it.
going back to 6v6 would also take a lot of work even if its significantly less… i think players overestimate how much they have to do for that tho. but both options seem like they would need to do quite a lot of things. and either way it would divide the community. the transition into overwatch 2 is whats making it so difficult, that was the mistake that was made above all else.
They have been going the exact wrong direction with how to balance tanks in 5v5. They should have made them squishier with more ways to outplay CC with skill expression. Instead they just made them bigger and unkillable. At this point going back to 6v6 would be way better.
I had a lot of fun on Lucio during season 9, I was able to dps a lot and I noticed my accuracy did go up but the damage nerfs in season 10 have made me not want to dps as I lose fights I would have won in season 9. I agree they should nerf his speed and/or add another speed support so Lucio isn’t a must pick and they can bring his kill power back up
This season i haven’t played many games but I have a very high winrate while feeling like half a teammate
I honestly love seeing the OW 1 gameplay. you can see how much better the game was when you actually had to use strategy and didnt get oneshot every 5 seconds.
If you're still getting one-shot, that might be on you. The global health buffs directly nerfed oneshots and maybe only one character in the came can still do it. Also oneshots were still very much in ow1 between mercy pocketed ashe, widow, and hanzo, and the hog hook
No, you were getting one shot A LOT. The difference? They didn’t remove a fucking tank. And now even dps is getting affected by 5v5 because their identities are being removed from the game.